“How did you ever break through that?” Nynaeve asked curiously. Elayne had the novices all paired off now, fumbling their way through passing small flames back and forth.
Theodrin’s smile deepened, but a blush stained her cheeks, too. “A young man named Charel, a groom in the Tower stables, began making eyes at me. I was fifteen, and he had the most gorgeous smile. The Aes Sedai let him sit in on my lessons, quietly in a corner, so I could channel at all. What I didn’t know was that Sheriam had arranged for him to meet me in the first place.” Her cheeks darkened more. “I also didn’t know he had a twin sister, or that after a few days, the Charel sitting in the corner was really Marel. When she took off her coat and shirt one day in the middle of my lesson, I was so shocked I fainted. But after that, I could channel whenever I wanted.”
Nynaeve burst out laughing — she could not help it — and despite her blushes Theodrin joined in without restraint. “I wish it could be that easy for me, Theodrin.”
“Whether it is or not,” Theodrin said, her laughter fading, “we will break down your block. This afternoon — ”
“I’m studying Siuan this afternoon,” Nynaeve cut in hastily, and Theodrin’s mouth tightened.
“You have been avoiding me, Nynaeve. In the past month you’ve managed to wriggle out of all but three appointments. I can accept your trying and failing, but I will not accept you being afraid to try.”
“I am not,” Nynaeve began indignantly, as a small voice asked whether she was trying to hide the truth from herself. It was so disheartening to try and try and try — and fail.
Theodrin let her have no more than those few words. “Allowing that you have commitments today,” she said calmly, “I will see you tomorrow, and every day thereafter, or I will be forced to take other steps. I don’t want to do that, and you do not want me to, but I mean to break your block down. Myrelle has asked me to make special efforts, and I vow that I will.”
The near echo of what she had told Siuan made Nynaeve’s jaw drop. This was the first time the other woman had used the increased authority of her position. It would be just the way Nynaeve’s luck was running today for her and Siuan to end up waiting to see Tiana side by side.
Theodrin did not wait for a reply. She merely nodded as if she had received agreement, then glided off up the street. Nynaeve could almost see a fringed shawl around her shoulders. This morning was not going well at all. And Myrelle again! She wanted to scream.
Over among the novices, Elayne gave her a proud smile, but Nynaeve only shook her head and turned away. She was going back to her room. It was a measure of how the day was progressing that before she was halfway there Dagdara Finchey crashed into her running and knocked her flat on her back. Running! An Aes Sedai! The big woman did not stop, either, or as much as shout an apology over her shoulder as she plowed through the crowd.
Nynaeve picked herself up, dusted herself off, stum
ped the rest of the way to her room and slammed the door behind her. It was hot and close, the beds were unmade until Moghedien could get around to them, and worst of all, Nynaeve’s weather sense told her there should have been a hailstorm breaking over Salidar right that minute. But she would not be surprised there, or trampled.
Flinging herself down atop her rumpled sheets, she lay fingering the silver bracelet, thoughts skittering from what she might manage to dig out of Moghedien today to whether Siuan would appear that afternoon, from Lan to her block to whether she was going to stay in Salidar. It would not be running away, really. She would probably go to Caemlyn, to Rand; he did need somebody to keep his head from swelling too big, and Elayne would like that. She just wished leaving — not running away! — had not begun to seem even more attractive after Theodrin announced her intentions.
She expected to have some sign in the emotions oozing through the a’dam that Moghedien was finished with her work, and to have to go find her — she often hid when she was sulking — but the shame and outrage never decreased, and the door banging open came as a complete surprise.
“So there you are,” Moghedien grated. “Look!” She held up her hands. “Ruined!” To Nynaeve they looked no different from any hands that been doing laundry; white and wrinkled, true, but that would fade. “It is not enough that I must live in squalor, fetching and carrying like a servant, now I’m expected to labor like some primitive —!”
Nynaeve cut her off by a simple expedient. She thought of one quick stroke of a switch, what it felt like, then shifted the thought into the part of her mind that held Moghedien’s received emotions. The other woman’s dark eyes widened, and her mouth clamped shut, lips compressing. Not a hard blow, but a reminder.
“Close the door and sit down,” Nynaeve said. “You can make the beds later. We are going to have a lesson.”
“I am used to better than this,” Moghedien grumbled as she complied. “A night laborer in Tojar was used to better!”
“Unless I miss my guess,” Nynaeve told her sharply, “a night laborer in wherever didn’t have a death sentence hanging over his head. Any time you want it, we can tell Sheriam exactly who you are.” It was pure bluff — Nynaeve’s stomach clenched up in a burning ball at the mere thought — but a sickening flood of fear roared out of Moghedien. Nynaeve almost admired how steady the woman’s face remained; had she felt like that, she would have been shrieking and gnashing her teeth on the floor.
“What do you want me to show you?” Moghedien said in a level tone. They always had to tell her what they wanted out of her. She practically never volunteered anything unless they pressed her to a point Nynaeve considered the brink of torture.
“We’ll try something you haven’t been very successful with teaching. Detecting a man’s channeling.” So far, that was the only thing she and Elayne had not been able to pick up quickly. It could be useful if she did decide to go to Caemlyn.
“Not easy, especially with no man to practice on. A pity you haven’t been able to Heal Logain.” There was no mockery in Moghedien’s voice or on her face, but she glanced at Nynaeve and hurried on. “Still, we can try the forms again.”
The lesson truly was not easy. It never was, even with something Nynaeve could learn right away once the weaves became clear. Moghedien could not channel without Nynaeve allowing her to, without Nynaeve guiding her, in fact, but in a new lesson Moghedien had to give the lead for how the flows were to go. It made a pretty tangle, the main reason they were not able to learn a dozen new things from her every day. In this case Nynaeve already had some idea of how the flows were woven, but it was an intricate lacework of all of the Five Powers that made Healing seem simple, and the pattern shifted at blinding speed. Its difficulty was the reason it had never been used very often, Moghedien claimed. It also gave you a grinding headache if kept up very long.
Nynaeve lay back on her bed and worked at it as hard as she could, though. If she did go to Rand, she might need this, and there was no telling how soon. She channeled the flows all by herself, too; an occasional thought of Lan or Theodrin kept her anger twisted up tight enough. Sooner or later Moghedien was going to be called to account for her crimes, and where would Nynaeve be then, used to drawing on the other woman’s power whenever she wanted? She had to live and work with her own limits. Could Theodrin find a way to break her block? Lan had to be alive, so she could find him. The ache became a pain that bored at her temples. A tightness appeared around Moghedien’s eyes, and she rubbed at her head sometimes, but underneath the fear the bracelet carried a current of what almost seemed contentment. Nynaeve supposed that even when you did not want to teach, it must bring a certain satisfaction. She was not sure she liked Moghedien displaying such a normal human response.
She was not sure how long the lesson went on, with Moghedien murmuring, “Almost” and “Not quite,” but when the door banged open again, she nearly lifted straight up off the mattress. The sudden bolt of fear from Moghedien would have accompanied howling in another woman.
“Have you heard, Nynaeve?” Elayne asked, pushing the door to. “There’s an emissary from the Tower, from Elaida.”
Nynaeve forgot the words she would have shouted if her heart had not been clogging her throat. She even forgot her headache. “An emissary? You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure, Nynaeve. Do you think I’d come running for gossip? The whole village is aflutter.”
“I don’t know why,” Nynaeve said sourly. The grating inside her skull was back. And all the goosemint in her scrip of herbs under the bed would not have quieted the burning in her stomach. Would the girl never learn to knock? Moghedien had both hands pressed to her belly as though she could use some goosemint as well. “We did tell them Elaida knew about Salidar.”